Niclays had never been sure if Edvart knew the truth about his relationship with Jannart. Perhaps he had closed his eyes to it. If the matter became public, the High Prince would have no choice but to banish Jannart, his closest friend, for breaking his vow to the Knight of Fellowship.
A log collapsed in the fire. Beside it, Jannart was poring over his manuscripts, which were fanned across the rug in front of him. For the past few years, he had forsaken his art to pursue his passion for history. He had always been troubled by the calamitous loss of knowledge in the Grief of Ages—the burning of libraries, the destruction of archives, the irrevocable ruin of ancient buildings—and now that his son, Oscarde, was taking on some duties in the duchy, he could finally lose himself in knitting the holes in history together.
Niclays lay naked in the bed, gazing at the painted stars. Someone had gone to a great deal of effort to make them mirror the true sky.
“What is it?”
Jannart had not even needed to look up to know something was wrong. Niclays heaved a sigh. “A wyvern on the edge of our capital should dampen even your spirits.”
Three days before, two men had ventured into a cave west of Brygstad and happened upon a slumbering wyvern. It was well known that Draconic beings had found places to sleep all over the world after the Grief of Ages, and that if you looked hard enough in any country, you might be able to find one.
In the Free State of Mentendon, the law declared that, if discovered, these beasts should be left alone on pain of death. There was an ubiquitous fear that waking one could wake others—but these men had thought themselves above the law. Drunk on dreams of knighthood, they had drawn their swords and tried to kill the beast. Not best pleased with the rude awakening, it had eaten its attackers and clawed its way out of the cave in a fury. Too listless from its sleep to breathe fire, it had still managed to maul several residents of a nearby town before some brave soul put an arrow through its heart.
“Clay,” Jannart said, “it was two arrogant boys playing the fool. Ed will ensure it does not happen again.”
“Perhaps dukes are na?ve to such things, but there are arrogant fools the world over.” Niclays poured himself a glass of black wine. “There was an abandoned mine not far from Rozentun, you know. Rumor had it among children that there was a cockatrice in there that had laid a clutch of golden eggs before it went to sleep. A girl I knew broke her back trying to get to it. A boy got himself lost in the darkness. He was never found. Arrogant fools, both.”
“It amazes me that after all these years, I am still learning things about your childhood.” Jannart arched an eyebrow, mouth quirked. “Did you ever seek the golden clutch?”
Niclays snorted. “The notion. Oh, I tiptoed to the entrance once or twice, but the love of your life was an abject coward even as a boy. I fear death too much to seek it.”
“Well, I can only be grateful for the softness of your spine. I confess to fearing your death, too.”
“I remind you that you are two years my senior, and that the arithmetic of death is against you.”
Jannart smiled. “Let us not speak of death when there is still so much life to be lived.”
He stood, and Niclays drank in the powerful delineation of his body, sculpted by years of fencing. At fifty, he was as striking as he had been on the day they had first met. His hair reached his waist, and it had darkened over time to a rich garnet, silvered at the roots. Niclays still had no notion of how he had held on to this man’s heart for all these years.
“Very soon, I mean to whisk you away to the Milk Lagoon, and there we shall live without name or title.” Jannart climbed onto the bed, hands on either side of Niclays, and kissed him. “Besides, you are likely to die before me at this rate. Perhaps if you would stop cuckolding me with Ed’s wine—” His hand snuck toward the glass.
“You have your dusty books. I have wine.” Chuckling, Niclays held it out of reach. “We agreed.”
“I see.” Jannart made another, half-playful swipe for it. “And when did we agree this?”
“Today. You may have been asleep.”
Jannart gave up and rolled onto the bed beside him. Niclays tried to ignore the tug of remorse.
They had quarreled about his weakness for wine many times over the years. He had curbed his drinking enough to stop him losing hours of memory, as he often had in his youth, but his hands shook if he went too long without a cup. Jannart seemed too weary of the subject to fight him on it these days. It hurt Niclays to disappoint the one person who loved him.
Black wine was his comfort. Its thick sweetness filled the hollow that opened whenever he looked at his finger, empty of a love-knot ring. It blunted the pain of living a lie.
“Do you really think the Milk Lagoon exists?” he murmured.
A place of lore and lullaby. The haven for lovers.
Jannart circled his navel with one finger. “I do,” he said. “I have gathered enough evidence to believe it existed before the Grief of Ages, at least. Ed has heard that the remaining scions of the family of Nerafriss know where it is, but they will tell only the worthy.”
“That rules me out, then. You had better go alone.”
“You are not getting away from me that easily, Niclays Roos.” Jannart shifted his head closer, so their noses brushed. “Even if we never find the Milk Lagoon, we can go elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere else in the South, perhaps. Anywhere the Knight of Fellowship has no sway,” Jannart said. “There are uncharted places beyond the Gate of Ungulus. Perhaps other continents.”
“I’m no explorer.”
“You could be, Clay. You could be anything, and you should never think otherwise.” Jannart rolled a thumb over Niclays’s cheekbone. “If I had convinced myself I was no sinner, I would never have kissed the lips I longed to kiss. The lips of a man with rose-gold hair, whose birth, by the laws of a long-dead knight, made him unworthy of my love.”
Niclays tried not to stare like a fool into those gray Vatten eyes. Even now, after all these years, looking at this man took his breath away.
“What of Aleidine?” he said.
He tried to sound curious rather than sour. It was difficult for Jannart, who had spent decades stealing between companion and lover, at great risk to his standing at court. Niclays had no such care. He had never wed, and nobody had tried to force him.
“Ally will be fine,” Jannart said, even as his brow crinkled. “She will be the Dowager Duchess of Zeedeur, wealthy and powerful in her own right.”
Jannart cared about Aleidine. Even if he had never loved her as companions loved, they had fostered a close friendship in their thirty-year marriage. She had handled his affairs, carried his child, run the Duchy of Zeedeur at his side, and throughout it all, she had loved him unconditionally.
When they left, Niclays knew Jannart would miss her. He would miss the family they had made—but in his eyes, he had given them his youth. Now he wanted to live out his last years with the man he loved.
Niclays reached for his hand, the one that bore a silver love-knot ring.
“Let’s go soon,” he said lightly, to distract him. “Hiding like this is beginning to age me.”
“Age becomes you, my golden fox.” Jannart kissed him. “We will be gone. I promise.”
“When?”
“I want to spend a few more years with Truyde. So she has some memory of her grandsire.”
The child was only five years old, and already she would leaf ham-fisted through whatever tome Jannart set in front of her, bottom lip stuck out in determination. She had his hair.
“Liar,” Niclays said. “You want to make sure she carries on your legacy as a painter, since Oscarde has no artistic skill.”
Jannart laughed richly. “Perhaps.”
They lay still for a while, fingers intertwined. The sunlight washed the room in gold.
They would be alone together soon. Niclays told himself that it was true, as he had every day for year after year. Another year, perhaps two, until Truyde was a little older. Then they would leave Virtudom behind.
When Niclays turned to look at him, Jannart smiled—that roguish smile that teased at one corner of his mouth. Now he was older, it made his cheek crease in a way that somehow only served to make him more beautiful. Niclays raised his head to meet the kiss, and Jannart cradled his face in both hands as if he were framing one of his portraits. Niclays drew a line down the white canvas of Jannart’s stomach, making his body arch closer and quicken. And even though they knew each other by heart, the strength of this embrace felt new.
By the time dusk fell, they lay entwined in front of the fire, heavy-eyed and slippery with sweat. Jannart skimmed his fingers through Niclays’s hair.
“Clay,” he murmured, “I must go away for a while.”
Niclays looked up. “What?”
“You wonder what I do in my study all day,” Jannart said. “A few weeks ago, I inherited a fragment of text from my aunt, who was Viceroy of Orisima for forty years.”
Niclays sighed. Once Jannart was in pursuit of a mystery, he was like a crow on a carcass, driven by his nature to pick every bone clean. As Niclays craved alchemy and wine, Jannart craved the restoration of knowledge.